Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith
When you listen to people working in Brussels, the European Union seems great. The best thing ever.
They promise you : peace, prosperity and job for everyone. Nice….With the actual crisis, it is a bit more difficult to sell this programm, but still : the peace is still there (do not look outside of Europe).
Nevertheless, some people think that EU is something else: they do not believe in the EUcrats prophecy…Damn. They have their own prophecy.
One of the most famous anti-EU prophecy is the one from Vladimir Bukosky. He is a former Soviet political dissident, author and political activist. He spent 12 years in communist jail because of his activities. Since 1976, he has lived in the United Kingdom, continuing his activities against the communist ideology. In 2004, he published a new book called : EUSSR: The Soviet Roots of European Integration. The main idea of this book is explained in a video, posted on Youtube.
What is your reaction about this theory ? Do you think that he is right ? Soon, a second post explaining and giving argues against this. But first, yours reactions.
(23 votes, average: 3.70 out of 5)
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Well, it a bit surprises me as coming from inside the former Soviet Union and having many relatives that suffered from the regime… The EU-skepticism Bukovsky expresses towards the EU is not new and so many times raised that this does not surprises me - you will easy find arguments to smash his points :). But what really does worry is how being a former prisoner Bukovsky does not see any difference between the violent regime and the political union which countries join voluntary. It reminds me again of the fact that only on May 2009 European Parliament finnally passed the resolution condemning forced Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. Still, there are very different versions, how the Soviet Union is treated and seeing no difference between it and the European Union looks disappointing to me.
Wow, the video certainly had some pretty interesting points. Yes, The EU is unelected and unaccountable. The EU Parliament needs to work better.
He claims the leaders think of it as a new historic entity and want us to forget our culture and identity. We will be European and suppress all national feelings
He uses the example of the Soviet Union which ended with more ethnic fighting than anywhere else and was riddled with corruption.
This is a doomful prediction. But appealing to the past is not a valid argument. The Soviet Union was completely different from what the EU is. The EU was not achieved by armed force, countrys are linked through technology and more accessible than ever.
The current economic situation might strain it, but the EUs goals are often noble. With some work, more progress can be made.
Oh geez.
This old fart can only define himself by being anti-Soviet; now that the Soviet Union is no more, he still spends all his time finding ways to tilt at windmills. They actually wheeled him out as the Russian presidential candidate for the ultranationalists.
The best thing we can do with this ruin is ignore him.
(And for the record, I was asked if I wanted to join the EU. I said yes.)
Just sad!!! Everything is wrong, every argument is just so wrong… and making so many parallelism and anachronism is just a joke, that would actually be funny if not so many EU citizens believed that bullshit…
Actually this idea is not new - also in Latvian mass media there were quite a few comments and discussions if the EU is the same Soviet Union in a new design… But, as Ausra mentioned, there is a huge difference between both of them - and I’m not going to repeat them as she already did
(P.S. I am always surprised abt the accent of those who have been living so many years in the UK and still have their accent - from the first seconds it’s clear that his native language is Russian. It’s not bad, it’s not good - it’s just an observation that there are some things we’ll never get ride of - like our accents…)
My first reaction when I heard this interview was that I couldn`t believe that an intelligent person can thing like that. I even was a little angry at all that rhetoric. However, if you put yourself in his skin, may be it is not that hard to understand this man. His life was determined by the oppression of the Soviet system, he has experienced the destructive outcome of Union which had beautiful ideology, of course only by definition. I find it even normal that he is not capable of give his trust again, that he can not be anything else but pessimist about the European Union, his fear makes him bland… and this cannot be changed. At the end we can conclude using his arguments that he is “nomenclaturchic”, because his own perceptions don`t accept anything else but his own believes. In fact, it is not even necessary to provide arguments against his theories, because the single fact that we all can watch this on youtube means enough… But anyway, we can only TRY to understand these people, but we will never be able to, because we have never experienced the oppressive Soviet machine (for Western Europe thanks to the creators of the EU).
For me Bukovsky is a raving mad when he says that the EU is the old Soviet model presented in Western guise,his comparison is intolerable.
Anyway, his provocation can be constructive if we refer to the relationship between EU institutions and its citizens. The fact that European citizens do not take an actively part in the construction of the EU may rise some scepticism towards the “secret European machine”.
We’ve got a long way to go before EU will be accomplish, but it’s an amazing challange.
It is not very objective to post as an eurosceptic view such a radical opinion.
I consider myself eurorealist in contrast to eurooptimists.
Though the video is full of false arguments it provokes. There are still many faults in the EU which can bring it to its demise. Certainly this are not the “faults” described in the video.
@ Georgi: who said anything about objectivity? The fun thing setting blogs apart from - big yawn - neutral, mainstream journalism is its capacity to foster debate through slant, opinion and personal views; action and reaction.
@Kirsty: the EU (or rather, the EC to which bukovsky is referring) is somewhat accountable: the EP can, as a final measure, send the entire commission home. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santer_Commission#Resignation
Also, a very interesting paper from Oxford on how to better EU-legitimacy: (PDF-alert!) http://www.fedtrust.co.uk/admin/uploads/FedT_LAD.pdf